Name: Stardoll (http://www.stardoll.com)
Description (gathered from the site): Stardoll is a virtual paperdoll community site for everyone who enjoys fashion, design and making friends. The membership is completely free and most members are girls between the ages of 7 and 17. Stardoll is one of few places on the Internet developed with an emphasis on girls’ self-expression through fantasy and fashion play. Stardoll is a great place to spend time with friends and to meet other kids from all over the world.
Monthly active users: roughly over 1 million U.S., with over 31.7 million total members globally (Quantcast, Stardoll home page, 5/24/09)
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What works:
Catering to their specific audience
Stardoll knows what kind of members it wants to attract (young, fashion-oriented), and it has appropriately tailored its site to draw in and interest that audience. Nothing strays from the fashion and design world at Stardoll– premium members can even customize and create their own fashions and sell them to other members for virtual currency.
Easing new members into making purchases
Enough currency is awarded in the beginning (with the payouts in daily increments to encourage new members to return and emphasize long-term activity) to allow a user to get into purchasing items to customize and dress and style their avatar without having to spend any real money. The items available to standard members are appealing and priced low enough so that a variety of fun items can be purchased.
Persistently exposing new members to the perks of buying a premium membership
As users explore and participate within the Stardoll world, they are constantly shown the benefits of a Superstar membership– in the virtual stores, standard members see which items are only available for purchase by Superstars; when exploring the community, standard members can start to play around with certain features (e.g. the design studio), but are told that in order to continue or save their progress, they must upgrade. Standard members are still given an enjoyable experience, but by simultaneously exposing them to the premium member’s experience, there’s a greater likelihood that the standard member will be persuaded into upgrading.
An example of one of the many Stardoll clothing boutiques. Items are all reasonably priced, with those exclusively for premium members denoted by a star next to the price.
What could be better:
Encouraging viral growth
Most social games have an incentive for a user to either make friends with others already in the community or invite others to join. The former encourages retention of members (the more friends someone has within any community, the more likely that person is to stay active in that community) while the latter encourages growth; Stardoll provides an incentive for neither. And while naturally social users will automatically begin joining groups and making friends and telling other people about the site, these incentives are much like the initial free currency awards– they help ease a hesitant user into getting accustomed to participating within the community and reaching out to others.
Takeaways:
Help your users act as free marketers/publicists
While of course it’s important to have a good, solid and engaging product (no matter how many millions of people you can reach, if the product isn’t appealing, your active user base will never thrive), the quality of that product alone isn’t enough to maximize growth. Let your current users help you attract new members, but don’t wait for them to make the conscious decision to spread the word. Instead, give your users incentives (”popularity” awards for having so many friends or bonus currency for every friend who signs up through that user’s invitation) to get other people to join.
Find a balanced system between awarding free currency and encouraging your users to buy currency
On the one hand, giving out large amounts of currency (proportional to your price points) is good because it keeps new users active by giving them the ability to buy goods and spend more time within the game. On the other hand, give your users too much (or make it too easy for them to earn enough currency through gameplay) and it’s hard to motivate them to turn into a paying user. Make sure you find that right balance that gets your free users involved enough so that they feel motivated (as opposed to obligated) to either upgrade their membership and access premium features or pay money to acquire additional currency.
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